Jonathan Baldock’s new installation is like an exotic hothouse left to bloom. Across the India Mahdavi-designed dining room in the London restaurant Sketch, Baldock’s “The Gathering” sees humanoid plants grow up around the bar, two heads bursting forth from crowns of petals behind the maître d’s stand, a cluster of giant cocoons dangling from the ceiling, and a multitude of 80 unruly faces peering down at the diners from the copper-skinned walls.

Hand rolled, decorated, cast, and glazed, the artist calls these rectangular plaques his “mask works,” a staple of his practice since 2019. “They’re my bread and butter,” he says over a breakfast of truffled galette bretonne (me) and eggs benedict (him) at Sketch. When I arrive, Baldock is sitting quietly in a corner, wearing a baseball cap, but he quickly slips into quick and a puckish conversation, full of eyerolls, laughter and asides on celebrity ceramicists, intermittent fasting, the Mrinialini Mukherjee exhibition he’s just seen, and, of course, his masks.

“Faces are some of the oldest examples of art, aren't they?” he emphasizes. Indeed, the earliest candidate for an object collected for its aesthetic value is the Makapansgat pebble, with indents resembling eyes and a mouth, which caught the attention of a hominid in 3,000,000 B.C. The works’ approximation of facial physiognomy—sometimes cartoonishly graphic, sometimes unsettlingly abstract—references both contemporary iconographies (think of how the exaggerated expressions of emoji communicate across languages) and older, stranger traditions, like the toothy jaw that’s carved into the opening of a cave in Bomarzo’s mannerist Park of the Monsters, (begun 1547) which Baldock visited in Italy in 2024.

But the artist’s ceramic faces are only one facet of a restless, hungry practice: He also dyes, sculpts, and sews, and has made a grand four-poster bed for the Fitzrovia Chapel in 2017, and a Noah’s Ark of coupled stuffed animals for Jupiter Artland last year. What threads through this variety of formats and mediums is an absolute commitment to hand-production, with all its intimate imperfections. “More and more, social media is a projection of perfection, something very plasticised,” he adds. He sighs. “I try to be the best person I can, but I'm a very flawed individual with lumps and bumps and irregularities.”

Those lumps and bumps have a physical resonance: Baldock is an admirer of Niki de Saint Phalle and her curvaceous patterned goddesses, and his work is, in part, a celebration of the knobbly reality of the ordinary body. He’s drawn to clay and textiles, in part, because he says they “speak so intrinsically about being human, like how we spend 99 percent of our day connected to fabric in some way.” When sewing—usually using a humble blanket stitch, the sort used to finish a bedcover—Baldock uses a curved needle: the same kind, he points out, that a nurse would use for a surgical suture. “Warm Inside,” 2026, the series of woven sculptures suspended from the ceiling of Sketch, are each shaped like massive seed pods, pupae or bird nests, but through openings in their woven surfaces, hands or feet peek out, shyly. Each one could be a womb, a tomb—or perhaps both: a vessel conveying the whole span of a body’s life.

To make these cocoons on view at Sketch, Baldock not only wove each structure by hand from willow and wool, he also first dyed and spun that yarn from raw fiber. There’s a simple self-interest in staying in a near-constant state of productivity, he says, but this obsessive work ethic is also, I suggest, linked to his working class childhood in Kent. “I’ve done shitty jobs, and I’ve seen my mother work three jobs at once, so I do know what a privilege it is to be an artist,” he agrees. His mother comes from a long line of agricultural laborers, and worked three jobs to support her children. After graduating, the artist juggled jobs as a dishwasher and a school cleaner, among others, to be able to pursue his career.

Baldock says his upbringing also shapes his generous approach to display, how he stuffs his exhibitions with works, sometimes including soundscapes and even scents. “In my background, when the pools man comes to the door, your mum offers him a cup of tea,” he says (referring to the now-obsolete tradition of a collector who would come weekly to pick up sports betting coupons). “So, if you come to my show, I’m going to put on a spread,” he continues. “It’s not going to be two twigs and a bit of Sellotape,” he laughs. “I want to deliver.” 

The creative legacy of everyday working people is a preoccupation of Baldock’s, whether he’s celebrating the flowers grown in his family garden, or more distant examples of folk art: One of the hessian-sack hangings in his 2025 exhibition at London Mithraeum Bloomberg Space was appliqued with the phrase “You & I are Earth,” the words originally inscribed by an unknown maker on a 17th-century tin-glazed plate uncovered from a London sewer. For his 2023 exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, he recreated figures found in anonymous woodcarvings in nearby Wakefield cathedral—raucous, carnivalesque images of two-headed men sprouting leaves, or an acrobat taking an ass-first tumble.

“The Gathering,” may have officially opened with a glittery dinner, but Baldock had already taken his mother to see it over high tea. Meanwhile, he’s back to the studio in East London to work on his upcoming exhibition at Arnolfini Arts in Bristol, for which he’s thinking about the mythic image of the bear as a fearsome king of the woods, and the sensory, skin-contact connections we make with their cuddly and plush distant relatives. Though the Sketch project is not his first with a business (he has made artworks for the windows of the Hermès stores in Tokyo and London), the dining room seems to have lodged itself somewhere in Baldock’s thinking. For the Arnolfini show, he’s made a limited exhibition ceramic mask: a pink disc, with eyes, nose, and a mouth scored into it like a knife that has cut through butter. It’s called Dinner Plate, 2026, and, like the best of Baldock’s work, it’s sincere, a little goofy, and quite irresistible.

London-based artist Jonathan Baldock was born in 1980 in Kent. His distinctive sculptures and immersive installations draw on elements of folklore, mythology and ritual, as well as personal and cultural histories, inviting viewers to consider their social relations with each other and with nature. His work encompasses handmade techniques, from ceramics to basket weaving and embroidery, and uses natural materials such as clay, wood and textiles – including hessian, felt, wool and linen. Recent UK exhibitions include ‘Touch Wood’ at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) in 2023-24 and ‘0.1%’, at London Mithraeum Bloomberg Space (to 5 July). His recently opened exhibition at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, includes a new body of work that explores the magical and special aspects of queerness, alongside a presentation of his 2021 installation of cocoon-like hanging sculptures, ‘Warm Inside’.

Ellen Mara De Wachter: What was your journey to becoming an artist?

Jonathan Baldock: I was very creative as a kid – I used to draw pictures of my mum wearing different dresses, and I made houses for the fairies at the bottom of the garden. But I don’t come from an artistic background, and there are no artists in my family, so my understanding of what it was to be an artist was quite limited: somebody who did watercolours on Brighton Pier, or someone who makes things to put on a wall. Becoming an artist was a slow journey. I did an Art GCSE, and my tutors were encouraging. Then, I continued with an A-level, and a foundation degree, which I was particularly drawn to because you get to try everything. I’m not going to say that I never looked back because, of course, it’s a bumpy ride, but I always knew that I was going to do something creative. Now I see that my mum is very creative, and I see the creativity in my family that wasn’t nurtured. I feel blessed to have had opportunities, probably due to the time in which I grew up.

EMDW: Your new exhibition at Jupiter Artland is called ‘WYRD’. Why have you chosen that as the title?  

JB: ‘Wyrd’ is an Old English word, originally Norse, whose meaning holds more magical properties than the contemporary word weird, into which it has evolved. ‘Wyrd’ is not just about the odd and the unusual, but the magical and the special as well. I liked that definition of the word, especially considering the idea I had for the show. 

EMDW: A central theme running through the exhibition is same-sex sexual behaviours and relationships in humans and other animals. Why did you want to address this as a subject?  

JB: I grew up with a Christian background, but I don’t believe in any organised religion now. However, there’s something about the natural world, and a lot of recent scientific discoveries to do with our understanding of and our relationship to the natural world, that, for me, give purpose and meaning to existence. As a queer person, I’m aware of so many discoveries now – or that are being reported now, because they are not recent discoveries at all – which show that the natural world is extremely queer. There are same-sex relationships, transness, polyamory: everything.

It changes what I absorbed growing up about what was normal, and how that was weaponised. I’m unpacking all of these things, and it’s exhilarating to be able to look to the natural world and see that. I know it to be true because I know I’m not the only queer person on the planet, and I know we have always been here. It makes me think that the human race is colourful on purpose, queerness is natural, it’s brilliant, and it should be celebrated.   

EMDW: These ideas take shape in your new sculptures of hybrid or mutant creatures. How have you developed these works?  

JB: The list of animals that have these queer qualities is pretty endless. I have yet to find an animal that doesn’t have some research showing it has same-sex behaviour but I wanted to tap into the folkloric and the mythological. I’ve been drawn to the mythological since I was a child and this is something a lot of queer people can identify with. Generally, we connect with the idea of being outside society, so to attribute magical qualities to ourselves is very empowering. 

I knew I wanted to make hybrid beasts, so, for instance, rather than creating a sculpture of a giraffe and saying, ‘That has been identified as having same-sex relations,’ I wanted to make a giraffe that was even more magical, so I’ve made it into a three-headed beast. I have also included body parts based on my own body, and my partner’s body. The animals will be in pairs, which is a play on Noah’s Ark, but my pairs will be versions of myself and my partner, the artist Rafał Zajko, with elements of our bodies: faces, hands, feet. Even though some of the sculptures are going to be quite monstrous, it’s also romantic.

The creatures are all made according to old 1960s, 1970s and 1980s instruction manuals for making toys, which I remember from my childhood. There was a culture of making stuff at home then. I’ve used one of the more sophisticated manuals, but I have bastardised the animals. The work also taps into the idea of the child as a free spirit who has a kind of wildness and connection with nature. All of this is rooted in queer experiences.  

EMDW: Nature is a big part of your work, from the subject matter to the materials you use. How would you describe your relationship with it? 

JB: I have lived in London for over 20 years but I come from the countryside, and I have a complicated relationship with it, as do a lot of queer people, who might move to the city to be free, and to not have their difference observed or pointed out. But I have loved the natural world since I was a child and, as I get older, I miss it and I long for it. It’s a vital part of being a human being. To see outside ourselves and to see the world, particularly animals and plants, is so important.

There’s this idea that animism [the belief that all natural things have spirits] makes you more empathetic. A lot of old religions or small tribal religions still have animism, and they care for the world around them. We are part of a much bigger thing; we are connected to plants and even to stones. I want to have a positive outlook on the part we can play in our relationship with nature, and that’s where faith and religion, in a way, weave into it. I have faith in the natural world.  

EMDW: Sensuality is always at the heart of your work, as is your use of different media. What does that enable you to do? 

JB: I see art as a way of communicating. It’s a tool for connecting with other humans, and the spaces in which you do that are important. We have such a hurried existence that to step into a space that attacks all of the senses is appealing. I love it for myself, so I want to recreate that and give it to other people. It’s about creating a shift in people’s experience, creating something other. 

My work is a product of my body and I have an emotional connection to it. I’m quite an anxious person, and I find it very calming to work with my hands. It’s about the head and hand coming together, and that is very powerful. When I have used scent and sound, they are mediums to transport you, shift your consciousness, and I love that.  

EMDW: How important is it for your work to be held in public collections? 

JB: It is incredibly important because I make art for people to go and see. I love it when it’s not just an art audience seeing my work, and I’m well up for people disliking it. I’ve got a very thick skin. But it’s not something that I worry about, because I live in the moment of making and, for me, it’s all about being in a studio and making the work: that’s the real buzz.

I’m not in many collections: I wish I was, and I make a lot of work that probably would only survive in a collection. The work of mine that has been collected by the Arts Council, my ceramics masks, are the most commercial element of my practice, but it would be lovely if collections took the work that didn’t fit in people’s living rooms because I make a lot of that kind of work.  

EMDW: Your works are fun and uplifting, even when they are dealing with serious subjects. How important is humour to you as an artist?  

JB: It’s an interesting question because sometimes the idea of fun gets used against me, and the work can be dismissed as ‘whimsical’. Humour is very important to me but quite often it’s a class thing. From a working-class perspective, humour is often used to deal with serious subjects, but there is often this middle-class way of talking about serious subjects with stoicism and a seriousness that’s very Protestant. I think that you can have humour and joy and still talk about darkness and horror, because that’s a true reflection of the world that we live in.

Humour is also a powerful tool for being inclusive, because you’re more likely to engage someone with humour and warmth and kindness than you are with a dourness, which can be a kind of coldness. If anybody spends time with my work, and if they are open, then they will hopefully see that it is multilayered. Humour is a way of going under the belly of things, and you can totally talk about very serious subjects in a way that engages people. Actually, non-art people are often much more open to that. Another thing is my use of craft techniques; people can connect to the handmade quality of my work. My work is all about the human connection.  

SC:
Your new textile sculptures for YSP are inspired by three medieval wooden carvings from nearby Wakefield Cathedral. What was it about them that captured your imagination?

JB
To be honest it was hard to choose just three! The wooden quire* at Wakefield Cathedral is full of beautiful carvings that all tell something of the human experience. I decided to focus on the Green Men, a sphinx and a fantastic little misericord* of a person exposing their buttocks. Each is distinct but related. All objects tell stories, but I felt these characters really had a lot to say. As an artist, I imagine how much fun it would have been making them: they are pure in their freedom of expression. As a person from a working-class background, I am connected to how they represent the voice of a regular working person from history and not the voice of authority. As a queer person, I see them as objects that don’t fit within the traditional teachings of Christianity, yet here they are nonetheless. They have survived the reformation, and other repressive ideals and censorship. Despite some tampering (the Victorians placed a fig leaf on the figure exposing their buttocks), for me they tell a story of survival. There is love, humour and joy in these sculptures: essential parts of human existence that I really want to celebrate in the show.

The subject matter is also important to me. Two of the objects depict hybrid beings: the sphinx and the Green Man. These are creatures from the myths, folklore and fairy tales that would have been commonly shared amongst people at the time and that have ancient origins in stories from many cultures across the world. For example, Metamorphoses by Roman poet Ovid (43–17 BCE) is a catalogue of transformations where the boundaries between organisms are fluid and blurred. I am fascinated that today scientific research is making discoveries about how we are actually composite beings as we have microbes and bacteria in our bodies that keep us alive.

SC
Do you relate the hybrid and fluid forms of mythology and folklore to queerness? 

JB
Absolutely. I think they are proof that these ideas have been around for thousands of years, and I believe they allow for a space to be created in which we, as queer people, can see ourselves exist happily. A world without the rules and the binaries that society imposes. The Green Man is a symbol of rebirth and resurrection and as such is in a continual state of transition. I believe that we are all going through this: we all adapt, change and alter. It’s part of being human. Although there is much of the queer experience woven into the work, I believe it’s something we should all be able to identify with on some level. On the textile hangings I’ve sewn the words You Enrich This World – it’s a nod to the last sentence in Shon Faye’s book The Transgender Issue where she writes, “your existence enriches this world”. I thought it was such a powerful and moving statement, and a sentiment I wanted to share.

SC
The seasons and life cycles of the natural world play a central role in your work. Why is a close connection to the land, its rhythms and materials so important to you?

JB 
Quite simply I think it’s because I’m getting older, which means I’m experiencing grief and realising the fleetingness of life. I no longer believe in any organised religion, but I do believe in our connection to the earth, and I draw a lot of comfort from that. I live in a city in a very small flat without a balcony and I do feel the absence of nature and I miss it. I’m also aware that nature is not to be overly romanticised as it is a powerful force that can easily destroy us. I think historically people felt their relationship to nature more deeply, and I think it’s something the medieval artists of the little wooden sculptures in Wakefield Cathedral thought about with the creation of their hybrid creatures. I also wanted to make reference to the location of the exhibition, set within the landscape at YSP, especially as this is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to show my work in such beautiful natural surroundings.

SC
Creating an environment that appeals to all the senses is often a big part of your installations. At YSP there is a mural covering the walls and a special scent in the gallery. There is also a sound work. Can you tell me about that and how it relates to the objects and themes of the exhibition?

JB
I feel like sound is a great tool for creating intimacy in the space. Plant Song was created by Luke Barton in response to the works and he has described it as follows: “The sound for the show leans into the same themes and influences as the rest of the work and it looks to nature, folklore and paganism for inspiration. The sound has an unsettling and shapeshifting quality and it aims to underpin and enhance the alternate reality created by the physical work. The sound also moves through the seasons in a direct connection to the four large textile hangings seen in the centre of the space. “The main bed of the sound is derived directly from birdsong and plants recorded in the grounds of YSP. Changes in the electrical conductivity of the plants have been detected by sensors and converted into audio. This audio has then been mapped to the sound of ethereal choir voices singing in monophonic, Gregorian style drones and basic harmony and also abstract organs, both in reference to Wakefield Cathedral, which is a key influence on the rest of the work. On top of this bed are other nods to local culture and folklore. The sampled audio of the Wakefield Morris Dancers can be heard during a celebratory summery moment. And wood chopping has been sampled and manipulated to create a polyrhythm to represent working people, craftsmanship and the decay of autumn into winter.”

SC
Circular symbols feature on the ceramics and the hanging textiles. What do these represent?

JB
These are based on sacred geometry, the study of the repeating shapes and patterns from which all nature is formed. It is rooted in ancient cultures and is often used to symbolise how everything in the world is interconnected. I read a book by Matthew Champion on medieval graffiti and a huge part of it is dedicated to geometric symbols that were scratched into the stonework of many churches around the UK. These personal etchings were likely made by members of the congregation many years ago. There are numerous theories about their purpose and meaning, but I loved that they were created by everyday working people, and I felt a deep connection to that. I was hoping to find some in Wakefield Cathedral, but unfortunately there weren’t any.

SC
The materials and techniques you use feel democratic and linked to generations of makers through traditional trade and craft skills. Can you say something about these connections through time and material?

JB
I’m particularly drawn to processes associated with functionality – the ‘useful’ crafts rooted in the traditions of working people such as the appliqué, ceramic and basketry that the show primarily consists of. This functional aspect is clear with ceramic and basketry, but the appliqué technique that I used to make the textile works is also rooted in these practices. It was developed historically to make use of scraps and remnants of fabric so that nothing was wasted. There are some beautiful medieval examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Although it was common, much less of this type of work survives than its more highly valued cousins, such as woven or embroidered textiles. I’ve worked in textile my whole life. I was taught how to sew, knit and crochet as a child by my nan. She – like my mum and many of her generation – was taught these very practical craft skills from a young age. I always think of my own use of these methods of making as a kind of love letter to them.

SC
Your mum’s face and hands feature alongside casts from your own and your partner’s bodies in these works. This also feel like an expression of love.

JB
Well, in a way it is. I wanted to immortalise my mum in the work, and it’s a love letter for all that she has done for me, but it’s also an acknowledgment of her as the person who taught me many of the techniques I use to make my textile pieces. This work recognises the importance of the people that support us in life. I think everyone can identify with that on some level, whether it’s a parent, a partner, or a friend.

SC
That’s a fitting place to end. With love expressed as a creative act. Thank you Jonathan for this joyful and thought-provoking show.

The raucous ceramic and textile installations of Jonathan Baldock (b.1980) are replete with emotion, often drawing on the artist’s personal history, as well as mythic and pagan traditions. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2005, his exhibitions have become increasingly ambitious, encompassing sound, scent and towering sculptures. His last solo show, we are flowers of one garden, at Stephen Friedman, London (20th January–25th February 2023), evolved out of the artist’s close relationship with his mother. Large sculptures resembling flowers reference her passion for gardening, alongside wider themes of nature and life cycles. Such sculptures – some of which include casts of his mother’s face – are at once humorous, touching, terrifying, surreal and yet undeniably lifelike.

Baldock’s solo exhibition Touch Wood at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP; 23rd September 2023–7th July 2024) develops similar themes. The double meaning of the title – at once a reference to traditional superstitions and lewd humour – parallels the multi-layered approach of the installation. Here, Baldock’s symbolism originates in the fifteenth-century misericords and carved wooden figures in the nearby Wakefield Cathedral. Misericords are small seats on the undersides of stalls or chairs, designed for monks or canons to rest against for support during long periods of prayer. They are often richly carved with vivid subjects, including mythical beasts, or scenes of everyday life. In this new body of work, Baldock has included casts of his face and body, as well as those of his mother – featuring as part of flower heads or appendages to ceramic vessels. This intensely personal approach is woven through with folk motifs, sacred geometric forms and hybrid creatures. Emily Steer interviewed the artist about this new project and his interest in elements from the past that have often survived in secrecy.

Emily Steer (ES): Touch Wood at Yorkshire Sculpture Park brings together multiple threads – from the personal to historical and local research. What was your starting point?

Jonathan Baldock (JB): I’m a fan of gargoyles and so whenever I go to a new place I check if there are relevant architectural sites worth visiting. Wakefield Cathedral doesn’t have gargoyles, but it does have misericords, which are found underneath the seats in the quire – the section where the clergy and choir sit during prayer. They often show weird hybrid beings that are akin to gargoyles. In Wakefield, there’s one carved with an image of a man bending over and baring his bum, which was really funny to me, and became a central part of the exhibition. There are a lot of scatological references in misericords; there’s also so much joy in them. The imagery isn’t what we would typically consider to be religious today – they are not necessarily connected to the scriptures – but rather more to do with mythical, pagan or folk beings. For me, they speak to the time and people who made them, who I would say were working people. They are beacons of self-expression, and this became the springboard to reimagine a sacred space for Touch Wood. I wanted to bring these small sculptures that have remained somewhat hidden out into the open and make them monumental.

ES: What sort of imagery do you see recur in the misericords, and how did the makers bring their own creativity to them?

JB: You see the Green Man quite a bit, the origins and significance of which in a Christian context are still unclear. For me, from a queer perspective, there’s something important about the misericords existing on the outside and surviving censorship. They survived the Reformation and the conflicts that followed. A leaf was added during the Victorian era to the misericord of the man exposing himself, so it was censored a little, but he’s still there. You can think of it as a silly bit of humour, frivolity and whimsy, but it also speaks to something much more complex. History is not written by working people, so I see these objects as a bridge to the people we don’t know much about.

I grew up around people with religious beliefs, and so I’m very interested in faith but from a distanced position. If you’re gay, you don’t have a place in many religions. But I think about existence and spirituality. Sacred geometry is a recurring motif in this new body of work, which ties into the idea of the never-ending line and interconnectivity of everything. It also relates to nature, which is another major theme in Touch Wood. A lot of these misericords are hybrid versions of animals and nature. There’s a brilliant documentary by Louie Schwartzberg about the mycelium network called Fantastic Fungi (2019) and a book by Merlin Sheldrake titled Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures (2020). These ideas are very ancient, but in a wider, cultural sense, we’re now discovering the extent to which we’re all entangled beings.

ES: There’s been lots of interest in the idea of entanglement recently. In The Milk of Dreams, at the 2022 Venice Biennale, for example, many artists returned to the interconnection between humans, nature and animals. The pandemic and the climate crisis have certainly brought these ideas – which, as you say, aren’t new – into focus as another way of understanding our place in the world.

JB: I grew up around nature and couldn’t wait to get to the big city. I think a lot of queer people have a desire to make that pilgrimage. I’m now in my forties, I don’t have children and people who I care about are dying. There’s a shift in how I’m thinking about why I’m here – it’s a feeling of ‘what’s next?’. In we are flowers of one garden I was aware of my mum not being around for much longer and I wanted to create a show about how important she is to me. But it’s not just a love letter to her and her garden, I was also thinking about my existence, our existence and the purpose of it all. Touch Wood is a continuation of that. I’m finding comfort in learning about the planet and the idea of my body returning to earth and feeding into something else.

ES: In secular cultures, there seems to be a shift in looking for new meanings – ones that connect with ideas of returning to nature rather than heaven or rebirth. We’re also thinking about the future of the planet and the death of the world as we know it.

JB: We’re probably heading for mass extinction, but I think life will continue in a different form. Our existence is so small and insignificant and yet in the West we consider everything in an anthropocentric way. I’m interested in looking at things in a collective manner: organisms make us, we are a universe unto ourselves. I wanted to create a space at YSP that is in parts funny, joyous and meditative. Hopefully it will evoke a feeling similar to what you might experience in a place of worship. A lot of people who don’t follow a religion say that they are still moved by such spaces. I’m attracted to creating that through colour, the handmade and the body.

ES: You also include sound elements in Touch Wood. Your installations have become increasingly sensory – your audiences walk into an environment rather than simply looking at pieces of work.

JB: I love being able to create immersive spaces when I’m given the opportunity. It’s very theatrical. I find a lot of pleasure in the potential for worldbuilding and creating a space to step out of the everyday. The sound has been created by a friend of mine, Luke Barton, who is a musician. He’s incorporated recordings of plants growing and birds at YSP, as well as Morris dancers and my grandad playing the accordion. These samples feed into a soundscape that takes visitors through all four seasons. 

ES: It’s interesting that you’ve mentioned theatricality. Your work in Touch Wood inspired by the misericords makes me think of colourful historical storytelling such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400), with its bawdy humour and celebration of working-class narratives. 

JB: Exactly. I like imagining what regular people were doing. We’re not that far removed from them. Although we learn about ourselves through the past, history is often viewed through a very narrow, formal perspective. If you were working the land, you’d be surrounded by nature, which can be hard. I can see where this view of it as something powerful and monstrous comes from. I think we’ve lost that.

ES: Can you tell us about the craft processes that you have used in Touch Wood? Are there any techniques that you tried for the first time?

JB: I’ve made works primarily in textile and ceramic, which are very much the core mediums in my practice. All the works are made by hand and the textile pieces have involved months and months of work. I would say they are the most ambitious textile pieces I have made in terms of scale – it was a real learning curve. I always talk about the calming and meditative aspect of hand sewing – the meeting of head and hand – but with these I was close to tears on a few occasions. They just wouldn’t play ball. I’m so happy with the outcome of them though. They feel so alive and powerful, which is just what I wanted when I decided to transform the little medieval wooden sculptures into big, imposing, powerful characters. The show also includes basketry, metal and glass, although I can’t take credit for all of those elements. They add richness and complexity for the eye so that it never gets bored.

ES: There’s a strong thread of inherited skills running from we are flowers of one garden to Touch Wood. In the former, you thought about the skills you learned from your mum, and in the latter you’re exploring your family tradition of hop farming. How far does your knowledge of this ancestry go? 

JB: My mum is very interested in family trees and ancestry. We go to the local churchyards and it’s quite amazing to see the places where my family have been buried for over hundreds of years. There’s no exciting royalty, just people registered to labour on the land; it goes quite far back. The crafts I employ are functional. I’m interested in the handmade but not high-end embroidery or fine beadwork. For textile works I always use blanket stitch, which would have been used by people living in poverty who made things from scraps of material. There’s also a relationship to the body: it’s often the stitch used to sew people up. Even the clay I use, there’s a functionality to it – it’s earthy – and the hessian I use comes from plants. I’m taking something that might be functional or overlooked – in the same way I’m remaking these small wooden misericords – and elevating them in a space where they can be beautiful or monstrous. 

ES: Thinking about that relationship with the body, many of the sculptures in we are flowers of one garden and Touch Wood feature the human form trapped in or emerging from another object

JB: Yes, there’s a blur of the body. You could look at them as being trapped or fused. There’s an obvious parallel with our interconnectedness with the earth and nature, but I’m also interested in the connection we have with human-made structures. Throughout history, nature and the body have inspired building design – columns in Classical architecture often have foliate motifs and Greek temples were modelled on the proportions of the human body, for example. Many of the body parts are my own but I don’t want the work to be necessarily ‘about’ me. I’m making votive objects for existence. Part of this is about claiming a space or giving purpose to my existence. It’s also about the ancient idea of metamorphosis – in the human consciousness, we often see ourselves in animals or objects.

ES: we are flowers of one garden was the first time that your mum’s face was cast in the work and she returns in Touch Wood. Why do you directly incorporate her body in your practice?

JB: A lot of my work is a love letter to my mum and nan. When I was growing up, my mum would drop me at my nan’s when she went to work, and my nan would teach me to knit and sew. She wouldn’t do fine needle work; it was very functional. We’d sit in front of the television and chat and I loved it. When I was at art school, the sculpture department always seemed to be a very masculine environment, I was in painting but I still wanted to make three-dimensional, sculptural objects so I relied on the knowledge I already had: the textile skills that I was taught as a child. Later, when I decided to create bigger things, I got my mum involved. She helped me quite a lot with my early shows.

In we are flowers of one garden I wanted to make an ode to her, not only as my mum, but also as a big influence on my work. Her garden is beautiful. She loves flowers and she works hard at it. I thought that was a great springboard for the exhibition. I wanted to capture some permanence, so I cast her body in it. The show was beautiful to create and it was magical to share with her. Making work can allow me to feel more powerful and motivated to make change outside the art world. It can be disempowering to focus on the negatives, which is difficult at the moment as there are so many awful things to be concerned about. How do you fight that?

ES: Growing up in the United Kingdom, I definitely had the impression that we were in a constant state of sociocultural progress, which, in retrospect, is far from the truth. In making Touch Wood I wonder if you have noticed any parallels between contemporary and medieval values towards sexuality, gender and class?

JB: I’ve been thinking about this. It’s hard to project. Many of those perspectives were never documented. A lot of our understanding around sexuality has been moulded over the last two hundred years. Prior to that, on the occasions when homosexuality was evoked in art, it was sometimes linked to humour. But I like to imagine that people are people and it’s always going to have been there. Similarly, before the Reformation there would have been women considered to be healers, who held prominent roles in their community. But this was extinguished with the intensive period of witch-hunting in Europe from the fifteenth century onwards. Previously thought of as intelligent and talented women, they were suddenly rebranded as dangerous witches.

We’re now making a huge amount of progress socially, but there’s always backlash and people resisting. I hone in on bits from the past that have the potential for magic, things that have the potential to empower, that have survived in secrecy.

ES: Your reworking of the misericords would seem to capture that. It’s exciting to think that the person who carved the nude man bending over would have a significant exhibition dedicated to their moment of expression over five hundred years later. 

JB: What’s amazing about the misericords is that they are nameless. This is just freedom of expression and pure joy. Using it as an emblem is incredibly powerful. Within this church – which is full of emblems of authority, both religious and political, as we can’t forget the role of patronage in these spaces – there’s this little man baring his bum. We have our systems of value and status, but I want to show humans and even their bodily functions alongside other more ‘serious’ subjects, just like they did in the Middle Ages. We all have the desire to laugh and love; we question our existence in the same way now as we did then.

ES: Although the distinction between secular and religious life exists today in a way that can’t be applied to the time when the misericords were created, they nonetheless seem to manifest as punctures in official narratives. They offer a more human perspective of this period in history. There’s also a strong history of pagan imagery, mythical creatures and goddesses from our land that many don’t connect with growing up. All of this leads the body to be cut off from pleasure and the natural world.

JB: I think many people are seeking that connection again and to challenge historical biases. Victorian attitudes towards sexuality, for example, were a matter of ownership. For me, what’s really fascinating about churches is that they’ve been better preserved than other types of buildings. They are rich material for tracing our histories. In many other areas, such as houses or farms, the past has been erased. The fact that these images have endured in churches of all places blows my mind – it’s a story of survival.

London based artists Emma Hart and Jonathan Baldock’s first collaboration ‘SUCKERZ’ is a beautifully grotesque analysis of the absurdly ritualistic world of the dinner party. Their monstrously fantastical creations are displayed, throughout the gallery, in a nauseatingly gastronomic explosion of flesh and excess that explores the physical and mental processes associated with one of the most favorite of middle class pass times. I Managed to catch up with them to find out more about the process involved in creating art as a duo and the reasoning behind their disdain towards such customary events.

ET
Can you tell me a bit about your relationship as artists and how the collaboration came about?

JB
Emma and I met on a residency at Wysing Arts Centre in 2012. I knew Emma’s work before meeting her and really loved it, but what was really magic is that we also got on really well. I identified with her as a person, and could relate to so much of what she said. Up until then I had never had that with another artist, and I found it quite profound. During the residency we quickly became friends, hanging out in the ceramic studio; making together and talking and having a good time. Until Wysing Emma had not made work in clay, but from that point on ceramic quickly became a common medium in both our works. I had some experience with it before, but I would say that now Emma has definitely become somewhat of an expert in it. I started off showing her how to do things, and now she shows me…

ET
How did you find working as a collaborative unit compared to working alone?

JB
The idea for the show had originally been to place some of our older works together in one show just to see what sort of conversation arose between the works. So it wasn’t actually going to be very collaborative at all. Just a dialogue amongst our two practices. As we sat down and started to select works for the show it soon became clear that in addition to our many shared themes, there were also lots of works dealing with the bodily acts and social scenarios of eating. We decided to make a large dinner table to display both our works, and then started making the additional elements that we thought were missing in order to make it a proper dinner party… Or at least what we thought could constitute a dinner party. For me, one of things that make working collaboratively so exciting is that it is an opportunity to work outside of my usual trajectory. I no longer have to justify what I make against my past works. This is totally liberating and opens up opportunities for my practice to be informed by so much more.

ET
Most of the materials used could perhaps be described as craftsy but are depicting these opulently, grotesque forms and acts. Is there an intentional juxtaposition regarding the materials and and what is made with them?

EH
We have used clay, textiles, photographs and found objects as materials. For myself, sculpture most recently ceramics, provides a way to physically corrupt and ‘dirty’ images and forcefully squeeze more life out of them. Clay provides a way to work behind pictures, and reveal the raw, crude, real state of things that images screen off. The dumbness and lumpiness of clay becomes a provocative way to mess things up. With Jonathan’s work craft techniques and materials are pushed to be over the top and excessive. Absurd appearances are conjoured from everyday items and a fantastical alternative is provided to our conventional experiences.

ET
The work, for me, represents the ritualistic aspect of dinner parties and maybe not in a completely positive light. Is this intentional and Are you both fans of dinner parties?

EH
I have never been to a dinner party, and Jonathan has only been to a handful. I have certainly never held one. I live in a small grotty flat with a very small grotty kitchen that couldn’t cope with anything social. I also hate cooking. Dinner parties seem from a different world, to the one myself and Jonathan inhabit.

ET
The work is displayed and made in a such a way that the viewer wants to pick it up and touch it (at least I did) but obviously cannot. Was it made to have a tactile appeal?

EH
Through the use of disembodied body parts a physical sensation or equivalence in the viewer can be set off–when looking at a tongue you might experience your own. Also through the fact we normally touch things on a table, plates and napkins etc a sensual experience, beginning with touch, is offered. You are right, you can’t touch it, but hopefully you can feel it.

ET
Can you tell me a bit about how the show came about?

JB
As I said already Emma and I have wanted to work together on exhibition for some time. We recently got an exciting commission through PEER gallery, and the De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill to work on an ambitious new work together. This was prior to our show at L’Etrangere, so when Emma got invited to show at the gallery she invited me to get involved too as an opportunity to test run how we work together and see if it in any way contributes to our forthcoming projects. For me it has been a real pleasure. During the install we agreed on all the decisions about the placement of objects and the arrangements of the show. Perhaps because at the core of if we love each others work so it was exciting to see each others work next to each other. The show has definitely proved that we make a great team and I’m really exciting about starting work together on our next project. Watch this space…

Jonathan Baldock’s work presents the human as a built thing–an object sewn, stuffed and patch-worked together. His current show at VITRINE gallery in London is named after an essay on William Burroughs, and the writer’s ideas on escaping the body and language permeate the artists work. By taking the bodily hole as its key motif, ‘Notes from the Orifice’ considers the points at which the self tumbles into and entangles itself with the space that is in fact distinct from the self. And in the show, this space forms itself as colourful, crafted works that rely on the artist but from which he is crucially absent.

MT
‘Notes from the Orifice’ is the title of a 1985 essay by Robert Lydenberg on William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Has this essay influenced your works, or did you notice thematic connections after you’d made them? 

JB
It wasn’t the essay that particularly influenced the exhibition, but the title. I had been reading Burroughs’ Naked Lunch–on which the essay was written–and was really interested in Burroughs’ fascination with the relationship between the physical body and mind, which is an ongoing investigation in my work. I had already considered the thematic connections between Burroughs’ work and mine in my previous solo at Chapter Gallery, Cardiiff, entitled ‘The Soft Machine’. As the title of the show specifically quotes Burroughs’ essay title, I thought it only right that I should credit him. Although living in the age of the Internet, we often don’t know, or forget, the source of the information we absorb.

MT
How does this exhibition at VITRINE relate to and expand upon your older work?

JB
This show is a continuation from my solo show at Chapter Gallery; Cardiff, entitled ‘The Soft Machine’ after the William Burroughs book. I aimed to draw a link via the title but also wanted to continue to explore the idea of the viewer stepping inside an artwork as an alternative reality. I am thinking about how an exhibition can make the visitor an essential part of the artwork, by choreographing their movements around the exhibition from their very first encounter of the show. I begin with the window on the street outside; visitors have to tiptoe or bend down to see the exhibition through the peepholes I have created through a wall sculpture in the window. To make the interior world, I chose light bright pastel colours that I hope will lull the viewer into a false sense of calm and cosy familiarity, that is then subverted on closer inspection: all is not quite as it seems. I will also be continuing my ongoing collaboration with artist and choreographer Florence Peake, whom I first worked with at Primary in Nottingham early this year, with a performance in the gallery on October 16th. Why do you think the orifice is particularly worthy of examination?

MT
A few years ago I made a series of salt-dough busts in which things were growing and sprouting from their noses, ears and mouths. Its been a recurring motif in my work and one with which I have considered throughout. What is my fascination with this part of the body? I sometimes wonder if it’s my complete inability to articulate myself with words. The mouth is a vessel, which suppresses expression rather than aids it. My mate Emma Hart did a show at Camden Arts Centre last year that dealt a lot with mouths as the link between inside and outside. It really resonated with me. We share a lot of concerns within our work, and she’s a great inspiration to me: one of my all time favourite artists. Next year we’re planning a big collaboration so watch this space.

JB
I have been making these hollow sculptures for a few years now, after a long running obsession with the work of Barbara Hepworth. My friend Kathy Noble actually also kept describing my hollow sculptures as orifices… It seemed right that the word should appear in the title of the show, as it was an aspect of my work that I wanted to explore further. I became more and more focused on ideas of the hole and what it meant for me. I started with hollow sculptures and then tried to translate this onto canvas with a series of “Orifice” paintings. It then struck me that Lucio Fontana had made the slash paintings, where he slashed holes in the canvas–hard angry gestures against traditional forms of painting and art history. I wondered if I could respond to that with meticulously stitched holes. In these orifice pictures you can see the skeleton (the frame) beneath.

For me the hole is the perfect metaphorical symbol of the portal separating two worlds–the inner reality and the outer reality. In terms of the human body the orifice is the only link between the inside and the outside.

MT
What place do aspects of traditional craft have in your work?

JB
I think the concept of craftsmanship and the ‘hand-made’ has never been more relevant than it is today. For too long, ideas associated with craft have been dismissed as sentimental and nostalgic. I believe in the power of making things, and the bringing together of head and hand. To make things by hand is not a mindless activity; a painter still paints with his hands. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatise on education Emile (1762), he writes of teaching teenagers a craft: “If, instead of making a child stick to his books, I employ him in a workshop, his hands work to the advantage of his intellect, he becomes a philosopher while he thinks he is simply becoming an artisan”.

As a society we are forced more and more to experience the world we live in virtually. The objects we encounter have been ordered online, or bought from huge supermarkets. We have no real idea how or where they were made. My work does not offer an escape from that but perhaps it allows time to process and understand better. My sculptures are performed in person–they are not prefabricated. For me making things by hand can be an almost meditative experience. It is an opportunity to think and imagine by oneself as opposed to having an experience projected on us.

MT
There are a few cases where the shapes in your installations and paintings look as though they could be ancient symbols. Is this intended?

JB
Coming from a painting background I realise the importance of how formal tropes of composition, such as colour and shape, affect a work’s reading. With some of the wall-based works I wanted to create forms that looked like a painterly action or gesture, but that also alluded to some sort of unidentifiable language. Language in its earliest, and most primitive, form started as a pictographic method of communication. As such, it was also significant that I played on this by creating marks akin to a type of hieroglyphic language–it was important for me that it seemed on some level familiar like a lost forgotten language without it actually being one. I think this gap between something alluding to something, without it actually becoming the ‘thing’ alluded to, is a very interesting space. It invites the viewer to fill in the gaps. It is something I play with a lot in my work–by making ceramic objects that are seemingly forgotten archaeological tools and performances that allude to having a narrative without actually having one. It is quite a difficult ground to tread, as it is so easy to automatically define something by what we know already.

LJP
I wanted to start by asking you about the television play Quad by Samuel Beckett, which you showed during your residency at Wysing. What attracted you to this play and how has it influenced ideas for your new works and ways of activating your sculptural works in the show?

JB
The artist Emma Hart introduced me to the work during the residency. I had been thinking of ways I could introduce performance and interaction with my sculptural objects for a long time. Much of my practice references the human body in some way, so it really interested me to see how this could affect the work, and in turn how this could affect the audiences’ reaction and interpretation. I found Beckett’s Quad really fascinating because it articulates a space you can’t touch or see. It is less of a play and more of a dance with four robbed figures moving around a stage in a coordinated fashion. Whilst thinking about the idea of introducing performance I decided very early on that I didn’t want there to be a narrative, or for it to be an illustration of a play, text or song, instead focusing on a series of gestures and actions that were performed with the sculptural objects. In Quad, the cloaked figures repeat movements and this has a ritualistic and dark quality that also appealed to me. However, I think that whilst the Beckett piece definitely influenced part of the thinking process behind the performative element of the exhibition, the resulting collaboration with Henrietta Hale will be very different.

LJP
It has been really interesting to follow how you have researched and developed an approach that within your work naturally creates an interaction, for example some sculptural elements will function as both objects and bodily accessories. Could you tell more about the process and the actual making of these new sculptural works?

JB
I came to the Wysing residency to explore the metaphorical idea of the forest environment in relation to the future/a return to nature/and transformation. This residency was a fantastic opportunity to have conversations and dialogue with the other artists-in-residence and the Wysing curators throughout the development of the work. Much of these discussions were the catalyst for the concept of the exhibition.

All the works in the exhibition are made by hand so that by their very nature they relate to the human body–the touch, shape and weight. In the case of the felt sculptures, each is entirely hand sewn, shaped and cut through a self-taught technique that does not rely on any of the traditional rules used by a tailor or dressmaker. No strict planning or pattern cutting is involved, so the process is very spontaneous and more like a collage in the way I assemble the sculptures. The work evolves slowly through cutting, pinning, and stitching.

It was my intention that everything in the exhibition had the potential to be picked up or held, and could be used within the performance. The ceramic and felt appliqué forms allude to a set function or purpose, but the material with which they are made defies this by its very nature. For example, the fragility and scale of the ceramic hand-tool sculptures means that they are implausible tools.

LJP
Since your time here at Wysing you have been to Shanghai and currently you are at the British School of Rome. In which ways when going to a completely different cultural context, has it been possible to test out new ideas for the show A strange cross between a butcher’s shop and a nightclub?

JB
Although living in a state of flux over the past 9 months has been at times very stressful, it has also been incredibly important and useful. Since developing the idea to have a performative element to the Wysing exhibition I was able to test these ideas in collaboration with the German dance duo Rubato Dance Company in Shanghai. I came to them with the idea of making costumes for them to choreograph a performance in response to. My costumes were activated as a kind of sculptural painting through the physicality of dance, in order that they accumulate a history as objects in themselves. The pieces were made specifically for the dancers and were inspired in part by the costumes of traditional Chinese Opera. I wanted the costumes to allow freedom for play, and to function as objects that transform and mutate through dance. This experience was incredibly important to me as it was the first time I had collaborated with others, and so had to relinquish a certain amount of artistic control. Having no prior experience of working in the medium of dance we decided that Jutta Hell would take on the choreography of the performance. I was incredibly pleased with the resulting performance at the Rockbund Art Museum, however I realised that I wanted to have much more involvement in my collaboration with Henrietta Hale. Rather than a polished performance I would like the process and development of the work to hold equal importance–hence the open weekend of the 6/7th July working in the gallery space with Henrietta and keeping it open to an audience.

LJP
My time in Rome has been much more reflective and provided an opportunity to process ideas and experiences whilst thinking about how to make them coherent in the exhibition. I love the title A strange cross between a butcher’s shop and a nightclub–it somehow suggest a fictive and implausible space. In your works there are many subtle references to literature, film, and pagan rituals, archaeological materials, the carnivalesque and theatre, could you tell a bit about your inspirational materials.

JB
The title of the show is actually a statement J.G.Ballard used in his 1991 BBC documentary to describe his vision of the dissecting room whilst studying medicine at Kings College, Cambridge. It was such an unlikely visual connection, but seemed so absurdly descriptive. On many levels it seemed an apt title for the exhibition, as I had been reading Ballard during my research at Wysing, and then moved to Shanghai to complete the residency. Shanghai was in fact Ballard’s birthplace and the city that informed so much of his work, so he had been a constant presence in the production of the show. In the statement Ballard links two very different locations through referencing the human body. This is something that really resonates in my own practice as I like to draw unlikely parallels and connections together from very different references and one of the main ways in which I do this is through the human form.

Much of the sculpture in the exhibition is inspired by very disparate sources. The larger monolithic sculptures quote the monuments of Stonehenge whilst also looking to the modernist sculpture of Barbara Hepworth. This same sculpture is made through a process of appliqué–stitching together a skin-tight fabric over forms and giving them a very human/bodily presence. The resulting hand-made fabric skin is both a mask and mimicry of the surface of stone, but also a costumed character on an open stage, about to perform.

In my work I try to weave together many different references and make subtle nods to them in the work. I love the idea that the works can be interpreted in different ways and to different levels of intensity. Usually a work starts with a single idea which by the end this is often almost completely abstracted. In this manner I try to avoid any sense of narrative. The pieces must work independently as well as together in an installation. It’s important that they have a conversation.